For the new uploader I'm working on[1], we want it to remember your previous preferences about what license to use and maybe a few other things.
Here's what I'm thinking about:
- We add a new preference for preferred license. - If present, this prefills the upload form with a license. - If absent, no license is prefilled.
- Whatever you pick in this form overwrites the preference. That is, uploading a file has the side effect of storing a preference for the next time.
I realize this doesn't capture every edge case, but the point is to get behaviour that's simple enough that most people can actually use, and experienced users can work with.
Our main difficulty at this point in the upload form is going to be about explaining licenses. I don't want to ask them to do understand something else like "Do you want to keep the same license choice for next time?" before they've even finished uploading this one. If it turns out that we have to ask them about this explicitly, I'd rather leave that to the end of the process.
[1] http://commons.prototype.wikimedia.org/ -- this is JUST a prototype, we're changing a lot